Homepods 2 pair over eARC has poor sound quality when surround sound is played through them

I've been having this issue ever since I got a second homepod and set them up as a pair with my Apple TV 4k 3rd gen (With Ethernet). I've enabled eARC on my LG QNED85 (2022 model) and the Apple TV (it shows eARC in the settings over normal ARC) and tried every permutation of audio settings on my TV yet I find the following results:

• Setting PCM to the audio input or output on the TV will always send a clean sounding stereo sound to the homepods regardless of the channel count of the source audio.
• When I try to enable bitstream on the TV and set auto/passthrough for the output settings I can hear 5 distinct channels through the homepod pair both when connected to my M3 Max Macbook Pro 14 (using the audio midi settings to test the channels) and my Sony UBP X700 playing 5.1 channel DTS HD or Dolby TrueHD audio BUT the audio quality is horrible, sounds like sub 100kbps mp3 at best.

Has anybody found a way to output uncompressed 5.1+ channel audio through the Homepods 2 over eARC like the eARC standard should be able to? I'd love to experience my surround sound dolby atmos blu rays in the full soundstage and clarity that the homepods can produce.

I've searched all over the internet for this issue and have found a few with the exact same issue, u/Pyrazol310 on reddit comes to mind, but absolutely no solutions. I'm really desperate for help here haha and am at the point that I want to try and see if I can contact an Apple engineer to get a definite answer on this.

Thank you.